It is an epigram in Latin that I wrote quite extemporaneously. The content completely belies reality; I wrote what I wrote because it was well suited to the vaunting of my knowledge of complex grammatical structures and because it is midly humourous, not because it, in any way shape or form, is true. Anyways, this is what it says:

"(There is an implicit 'He said:' here)Had the Gods not suffered and were the gods not suffering that I should be not beautiful, I should be able to do all things. He said: "Why had the Gods forsaken him? (This sentence's structure suggests that the question is rhetorical.) What was he to do with himself? (Rhetorical, but deliberative question - thus the sentence is not an infinitive phrase, unlike the last one.) They made him uglier than that even a dog should be able to look upon his countenance. (End quote of hypothetical person) I should incline and fain ask anyone, even the Devil himself, that through his agency I should be made beautiful, may only I should not live a dolorous life. I say that, if otherwise the Gods had acted, I would have lived well and would be living well now."

Latin is highly terse! Japanese is, in so very many ways, similar to Latin. It really behooves him, who should have placed upon himself the willful incumbency of learning Japanese, to have come to the understanding of some of the more basic grammatical features of the Latin language... Latin is also highly apt to better one's English grammar. Because, with Latin, one must know just what function each word has and should have, in order to know what ending to place on the end of the word, he really does come to a great understanding of language in general and the modalities of human expression.

Last edited by CviCvraeVtMoriar on Fri 08.05.2005 4:27 am, edited 1 time in total.

So how is Latin like Japanese? I often find myself thinking Japanese to be inefficient & confusing. I'm sure Japanese people think the same thing about learning English though...

Japanese is inefficient and confusing. Very little seems very logical to me. Nothing in Japanese seems to fit perfectly into the category of noun, adverb, adjective, verb, or particle - or, at very least, words are used very strangely and not according to their classification. Conditionals in Japanese are highly wonky. Adjectives have no explicit comparative degree. Relative clauses don't exist in the traditional sense. Grammatical subordination almost seems to not exist at times. On top of that, it takes a lot of study and knowledge to say the simplest things correctly.

Latin is like Japanese in that it is inflected - sort of.

In Latin, the endings of words change depending on syntactical relationships. If a language does this, that language is said to be inflected. The forms of inflection are called declension (Latin has 5 declensions), and the different forms of a declension are called cases (there are 6 cases per each declension).

(Ego (I) - only used for emphasis or clarification) ei discipvli librvm dedi. I gave the student's book to him.

'Ego' is the nominative of the pronoun, Ego.
'Ei' is the dative form of Is.
'Discipvli' is the genitive of Discipvlvs.
'Librvm' is the accusative of Liber.

'Ego' is equivalent to '私が'; 'Ei' to '彼に'; 'discipvli' to '学生の'; and 'librvm' to '本を'.

I wouldn't say that Japanese is inflected per se, but it does mark the functions of words in a sentence, as Latin does.

Latin is also similar to Japanese in that a verb comes at the end of a sentence (usually), and in that the subject is often omitted when it is clear regarding whom the person is speaking, and used when emphasis or clarification is needed.

Here is a complete list of the cases in Latin:

Nominative The case of subjects.
Genitive The case by whose use possession is related.
Dative The case of indirect objects
Accusative The case of direct objects
Ablative Doesn't have a primary usage. Its uses are far too numerous to list here.
Vocative The case of direct address.

Each of these cases has many more uses than I have shown here; I merely delineated their primary and more salient functions.

P.S. Most English words are inflected in that they have singular and plural forms. English still has a number of words that inflect for nominative and oblique cases, too (I believe they are all pronouns: I - me; he - him; she - her; we - us; they - them).

P.P.S. Some languages have more case endings than Latin, and some have fewer (Attic Greek has only 5. Sanskrit has 8.)

First of all, let me say that when I read your posts, I feel like a slightly-retarded 7 year old.

Very little seems very logical to me. Nothing in Japanese seems to fit perfectly into the category of noun, adverb, adjective, verb, or particle - or, at very least, words are used very strangely and not according to their classification. Conditionals in Japanese are highly wonky. Adjectives have no explicit comparative degree. Relative clauses don't exist in the traditional sense. Grammatical subordination almost seems to not exist at times. On top of that, it takes a lot of study and knowledge to say the simplest things correctly.

Here is the problem: You have not realized that it is not a WESTERN language; in addition to that, it was never intended to be. I could tell you a list of things Japanese people think about English, but I will not get into that. B)

You have devoted a lot of time to other European Languages... You have studied Latin and Greek, and probably understand the root of almost every word in almost every European language... But as Marco Polo once learned, Asia and Europe are different.

I find Japanese to be an amazingly simplistic language. EVERYTHING is a pattern; I'm starting to see it more and more. Honestly, it is amazing how all the loose ends beginning to tie up automatically. At your rate, you'll be fluent in a by the end of '05, I'm sure of that. Then you'll begin to see.

My advice to you: do NOT try to learn Chinese... Wo putonhua shuo de bu hen hao...
It is totally different. Hell, and other Asian language. Thank god we chose the easy one... Maybe Korean is the easiest, but at any rate, Japanese is childs play compared to most other Asian languages, I'm sure.

Well, when talking about efficiency, I didn't specifically mean just the grammar. (I mean, verb conjugation is so much simpler in Japanese than in English) I think it's more of a cultural aspect.

Often times, people don't say things directly or don't say what they really mean. It's like they talk around the point, eventually getting closer & closer. Of couse this isn't true in all situations. I think it happens mainly in business. Some Japanese people I talk to say they get lost & confused during meetings at work because no one is really straightforward. Also, because in Japanese the subject is often left out, they're not sure what other people are talking about. Most of the time the subject is clear by context, but in some cases it's not.

It just seems like it takes a lot of time to communicate something. Not that I'm saying Western methods are any better... I just think a lot of time is wasted in Japan. I would say this goes for keigo too, but only because I don't want to study it :p

oh, just for the record, I think it's unnecessary to have katakana and hiragana. But then again, I also think capitals are unnecessary in English. I know they're used for a specific purpose. I just figure, everyone can understand without using them, so why bother?

I think I've gotten too lazy & cynical this past year...

The knack of flying is learning how to throw yourself at the ground and miss.☆-D.Adams

As for your feeling like a 'slightly retarded 7-year-old', I don't know why that would be; you are 15, having learned to speak Japanese at a university level.

Thanks for your words of confidence in my abilities.

Anyways, I have studied Mandarin - peripherally. It doesn't seem that much more difficult than Japanese. Deciphering the tones would be only a minor nuisance and only at first. Judging from what I had learned, therewith, I didn't think that they were as difficult to perceive as many say. Besides that, inasmuch as I have studied the grammar of the Mandarin language - which is not at all extensively - I have found that it is far more similar to English grammar than Japanese grammar. The only things difficult about the language are: the fact of it being a tonal language, the pronunciation, and the writing system (Those things constitute a very prominent portion of any language, but particularly Mandarin. )

Cantonese is another story, however. There are 8 tones or so, where Mandarin only has 5, right? That would be a bit more difficult. By the way, Ancient Greek is a tonal language; it has the rising-falling tone, the rising tone, and the falling tone - indicated by the circumflex, the acute accent, and the grave accent, respectively.

'Wo' means several things, so I think you need to write it 'wo3' (我), right? As for the other words, I'm not sure. Hao 'well' is 'hao3'? De, possessive particle, is a neutral tone? 'Bu', negativing particle, is 'bu4' or 'bu2' - depending on the words with which it is contiguous?

By the way, did you use みるな with me?! How rude! Someone has been reading a lot of manga?

Last edited by CviCvraeVtMoriar on Mon 08.08.2005 5:01 am, edited 1 time in total.

lomagu wrote:Often times, people don't say things directly or don't say what they really mean. It's like they talk around the point, eventually getting closer & closer. Of couse this isn't true in all situations. I think it happens mainly in business. Some Japanese people I talk to say they get lost & confused during meetings at work because no one is really straightforward. Also, because in Japanese the subject is often left out, they're not sure what other people are talking about. Most of the time the subject is clear by context, but in some cases it's not.

They may have opted for a periphrastic, circumlocutive way of speaking about things - which, in all honesty, can be annoying - but at least the Japanese are polite, where Westerners tend to be conceited, rude, and generally marked by a rugged, coarse, and often acrimonious demeanor. That's not to invalidate what you have said because it is, in many ways, a waste of time (notwithstanding the the level of politeness which it effects - even if that politeness is only a feint - which it probably often is (or rather, even if the politeness displayed doesn't spring from true intent and inherent congeniality, but rather from desire to conform to social conventions.))